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1 /EVERLY

This was supposedto be my time to relax. A fucking vacation. The kind where you sip fruity drinks with tiny umbrellas and forget that deadlines exist. But my brain refused to shut down, cycling through all the work piling up back home like a hamster on an espresso binge. I adjusted my sunglasses and dug my toes deeper into the golden sand, trying to trick my body into relaxation while my mind spiraled through every unfinished project I’d abandoned.

The sun beat down on my skin, warming me to the bone, but the heat couldn’t melt the knot of tension lodged between my shoulder blades. Five days. I’d been here five days, and I still kept reaching for my phone every ten minutes, muscle memory searching for the device I’d locked in the hotel safe on day one. That’s how pathetic I’d become.

Somewhere back home, my inbox was hemorrhaging requests. My team was probably drowning. My mother had likely called three times to ask if I’d be back in time for my cousin’s baby shower—which, of course, I’d already said I would miss.

I exhaled slowly, watching the turquoise waves lap against the shoreline. The resort sprawled behind me, white buildingsgleaming in the sunlight, palm trees swaying in the gentle breeze. Paradise, according to the travel agent. A place where stress melted away and worries dissolved like sugar in hot coffee.

What a crock of shit.

I’d lain in this same spot for three hours, and the only thing dissolving was my patience. My shoulders ached from trying to force them to unclench. My jaw hurt from the grinding of teeth I couldn’t seem to stop.

“Another drink, ma’am?” A shadow fell across my lounger, and I glanced up to see the cabana boy, all tanned limbs and practiced smile, balancing a tray of garishly colored concoctions.

I looked at my half-empty glass, condensation beading on the outside, the remnants of my third—or was it fourth?—cocktail of the day. Mango and pineapple and enough rum to make my lips tingle. The alcohol buzzed pleasantly through my veins, but even it couldn’t quiet the constant chatter in my head.

“Maybe later,” I said, stretching my arms overhead until something in my spine popped. “I think I’ll take a walk first.”

He nodded, professional smile never faltering, and moved on to the next sunbather. I stood, brushing sand from my thighs, feeling the grains stick to my sunscreen-slick skin. My red bikini, purchased specifically for this trip, felt foreign on my body. I was more accustomed to button-ups and pencil skirts, armor for boardroom battles.

Fuck. Even on vacation, I couldn’t stop thinking in war metaphors.

I grabbed my beach wrap, a flimsy thing with bright hibiscus flowers that had seemed so vacation-appropriate in the shop, and tied it around my waist. My legs—warming up toward that deep bronze that was closer to my natural skin tone rather than the sickly yellow I’d been thanks to my cave—stretched out beneath me, unsteady for a moment from the combination of alcohol and inactivity.

The resort grounds were manicured to perfection. Not a palm frond out of place. Not a pebble disturbing the carefully raked sand pathways. It was beautiful, but in the same way a stock photo was beautiful—perfect, sterile, devoid of character. I followed one of these paths, away from the crowded beachfront, desperate for something real to look at.

The maintained grounds gave way to wilder growth as I walked. Ferns unfurled in vibrant green spirals. Flowers I couldn’t name burst from within dense foliage in explosions of red and yellow. Birds called to each other overhead, their songs nothing like the gentle ambient music piped through the resort’s speakers.

This was better. Less controlled. My breathing slowed as I wandered deeper into the island’s natural landscape, away from the artifice of relaxation and toward something that didn’t feel like it was trying so damn hard to be peaceful.

The path narrowed, then became little more than a game trail winding between increasingly dense vegetation. I should have turned back. The rational part of my brain—the part that made me so good at my job—told me to stay where it was safe, where my cell phone would work if needed, where other humans could hear me if I called for help.

But the rum in my system and the restlessness in my bones pushed me forward.

Sweat beaded on my forehead and upper lip as the humidity thickened beneath the canopy. My beach sandals, never intended for actual walking, rubbed against my heels. I welcomed the discomfort. It felt honest, at least.

That’s when I saw it.

A shimmer in the air, just beyond a break in the trees. Not heat rising from sun-baked ground. Not light filtering through leaves. This was different—a ripple, like someone had dropped a stone into the fabric of reality itself.

I froze, blinking hard, certain the alcohol was playing tricks on my vision. The shimmer remained, hovering about six feet off the ground, a vertical oval of …nothing. No, not nothing. Something. The air within the ripple seemed both more and less substantial than the air around it, as if it were both incredibly dense and completely empty at the same time.

I should have run. I should have turned around and headed straight back to my lounger, ordered another drink, and forgotten I ever saw anything.

Instead, I stepped closer, curiosity overriding self-preservation.

The shimmer pulsed, almost imperceptibly, a gentle rhythm like a heartbeat. I reached out a hand, not quite touching it, feeling a strange coolness emanating from the anomaly. No heat. No sound. Just that impossible ripple, defying everything I knew about how the world was supposed to work.

“What the hell are you?” I whispered, the words barely audible even to my own ears.

As if in response, the shimmer expanded slightly, its edges softening, becoming less defined. I leaned closer, my face inches from the phenomenon, trying to see what lay beyond it. There was something there—a darkness, a depth that shouldn’t exist in open air.

My foot moved forward of its own accord, sandal toeing the ground just beneath the ripple. One more step and I’d be directly beneath it.

One more step.

The instant my body crossed the threshold, the world collapsed.

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